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Hoodies have become a staple in fashion, offering comfort, versatility, and style to people of all ages. If you are passionate about fashion and entrepreneurship, investing into the hoodie business is a great choice, especially in custom hoodies. Custom hoodies are a niche of their own who love greater personalization. It has a $1.790 million market and is forecast to increase fastly in the future.
So, let’s explore the step-by-step process to begin your hoodie business right now by reading our orientation guide below!
1. Find out your target customers
This step is one of the most important step because it decide your business is successful or not, so let’s focus on it carefully!
1.1. What is your target market?
The first step, which is also one of the most important parts, is to decide who is your target audience or target customer and how to reach them. To determine who is your core audience, you must understand which demographic segments have a preference for the types of hoodies you’d like to sell. Let’s consider factors like age, lifestyle, and income level, or even interests and buying behaviors.
To find your own answer, you can join and interact with customers on social platforms, study and research on Google…This is very helpful for you to have the idea to design your custom hoodies.
1.2. Study and research your customer need
When you know who your target audience or customer is, now, it’s time to explore the demand of customer. Is it a match between your ideas and your needs? If not, let’s revise the missing by tapping into gaps in the market to increase demand for products and also make you more sales.
1.3. Verify your own audience and make an overview plan for business
The process further is to verify who is your target audience, then make an outline for your business plan. This step is quite crucial because it directly influences your success.
To achieve the goals, you need to focus on checking your competitors, industry trends, and your target audience’s preferences. Both of them are necessary when making a business plan. For instance, you must know and understand the preferences of the customer, along with the trend at that time to have the best ideas and brainstorm for designing hoodies that are suitable for their needs.
Like exploring industry trends and understanding the audience’s preferences, checking your competitors is quite important. You can know who your competitors are in this major by both online research and offline research. From my perspective, online research is more effective than the latter, because you can use some free tools, like Semrush, Ahrefs… to check your competitors. That means you can reduce the fee and time minimally.
And to reach your customer, you need to join social media platforms like Facebook, Quora, Reddit, YouTube… These platforms allow you to connect with potential customers directly, share valuable content, and build brand awareness. By actively engaging on these platforms, you can expand your reach and increase opportunities to boost sales.
One popular way to achieve is “seeding" which involves strategically placing your product with relevant influencers or communities. For example, you could collaborate with a YouTuber who creates content about customization or fashion to showcase your hoodies. This approach can expose your brand to a wider audience who trust the influencer’s recommendations.
2. Create your logo
Now, it’s time to pay attention to the logo. If you have a strong visual identity, your owner’s business will stand out from the crowd and gain the following. Below is a guideline to make your branding become outstanding:
2.1. Pick your style
Logo plays an important role in determining how customers perceive your brand. Your logo must reflect the value and personality of your brand. When creating a logo, always consider the values, images, or emotions you want your brand to deliver.
2.2. Choose the color palette
Color is one of the first things a customer notices about a logo, right after its shape. Therefore, choosing the right colors is crucial for your branding success. Based on your brand’s core message, select 2-3 colors from the color wheel that reflect those values. These colors should be noticeable to catch the eyes, helping to hold the customer’s attention longer.
3. Other elements
Other items like sleeve labels, hang tags, thank-you cards, and stickers are also important for increasing brand awareness. However, it can be quite hard to find opportunities to stand out from the crowd and make a lasting impression on your customers.
To make everything easier, we provide comprehensive branding services for all customers. One of the great things about our branding service is its ability to differentiate you from your competitors. From colorful mailer bags to thank-you notes, these elements of marketing collateral, all serve to build a favorable impression of your brand in the eyes of customers.
So, if you need help, feel free to contact us, we’re always here for you!
4. Choose Fulfillment method
Fulfillment is one of the most important yet complicated aspects of running an e-commerce business. Choosing the right fulfillment method is crucial, especially for small businesses or those just getting started. Below, we outline several types of fulfillment methods. Let’s dive in!
4.1. Self-fulfillment
With this method, you must handle the whole process involving purchasing hoodies wholesale, printing design, and shipping orders. This approach requires a high initial investment, and a large space to store equipment and products. On the other hand, this option offers several advantages: better quality control, fewer design restrictions, and also faster shipping.
4.2. Outsourcing production
Outsourcing production, also known as contract manufacturing, is a common business strategy where a company hires a third party to handle the manufacturing of its goods or components. This can be done domestically, within the same country, or internationally. It can be a great way for businesses to save money, increase efficiency, and stay competitive.
4.3. POD (Print-on-demand)
Print-on-demand involves using a third-party supplier to handle printing and shipping products. When a customer orders products like shirts or hoodies, the third-party supplier (POD) will print and ship items to customers. This method saves the brand owner significant time and effort compared to self-fulfillment. You simply choose the hoodies, pick your designs, and the POD supplier takes care of the rest.
However, this method has drawbacks such as longer fulfillment times and less control over product quality. That’s why you need to choose a trustworthy POD partner who can ensure reliable services and high-quality products.
For example, Merchize supports a lot of customers, both small and large businesses, in delivering high-quality products with efficient fulfillment processes.
5. Choose style variation
Now, it’s time to choose the style of hoodie you want to produce. Everyone likes hoodies, but each person will have a different style resulting in different preferences.
Our catalog provides a wide range of products in various styles, sizes, colors, and materials, catering to diverse style preferences and needs.
- Classic Unisex Hoodie
- All-over Print Short-sleeve Hoodie
- All-Over Print Sleeveless Hoodie
- All-Over Print Zip Hoodie
- All-Over Print Full Zip Up Hoodie
And about the printing method, Merchize provides both DTG and Sublimation, allowing more space for customization.:
- DTG (Direct-to-garment): DTG is the most favorable printing technique in the hoodie market. They offer a quick, cost-effective way to create impressive prints. At Merchize, we offer various hoodie blank options from well-known brands like Gildan, Comfort Colors, Bella & Canvas.
- Dye sublimation: Dye sublimation is a popular printing technique that results in vibrant, photorealistic designs. The best part is that it allows printing all over the hoodie, not just the front or back like DTG printing. If you want to max out on the visual effect, choose sublimation hoodies.
So whatever you choose, we’ve covered!
6. Create designs
This is the most exciting part of your online hoodie journey. If you don’t have any idea, check out the current trends and look at the relevant competitors who share the same target audience.
There’re many tools that can help you create designs: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrators, Canvas, and Procreate. Depending on your budget and design skills, you can choose the most suitable tool.,
7. Set up your online store
Now, it’s time to set up your store. To create your own online store, you don’t need to be technically adept thanks to platforms like Shopify or Woocommerce.
You need to choose the platform you want to build an online store. Shopify is a popular choice because it allows easy website set-up and provides all the features needed for an e-commerce store. Even when you don’t know how to code, you can still create a functioning storefront to sell your hoodies. At Merchize, we also integrate Shopify available as well as other platforms like Esty, Tiktok… to suitable for all customer database. For detail information, let’s explore here!
Additionally, you can also focus on UX (user experience) when go your storefront such as: design your site for both mobile and PC, consistency and the time of loading. All of them is quite important because it influences directly on your audience to feel like resulting in your sales! So let’s focus more on this step!
8. Market your online store
When all is done, let’s go to the final step: market or promote your online store. This is so important to reach potential customers and increase sales. To achieve your purpose, you need to use some channels like social media, email, or advertising, along with running promotion campaigns.
Are you ready to start your own custom hoodie brand?
Now, it’s your turn to get started with your online business. Let’s follow step-by-step instructions. Hope you’ll be well on your way to launching and growing your successful online business!
And if you have any challenges when finding the POD partner, let’s contact us right now, we’re confident to bring you the best solution!
